Here is my latest post in ACUI's The Commons about student mental and emotional wellness. It seems fitting to post about that topic as I enter my final year of coursework for the doctoral program I am pursuing. Working full-time, going to school, managing a chronic medical condition...the stress can be a little much. I am grateful to my support system and painfully aware many students are not so lucky. Let's do what we can to support one another.

Building Unity on Campus

I know I need to get on the ball writing posts for this blog, since I haven't in months, but here is my latest for ACUI's The Commons.

Meeting the Needs of Students with Disabilities

Today, I am reblogging an opinion post from The Chronicle of Higher Education about technology and meeting the needs of students with disabilities.

What do you think of this issue?

http://chronicle.com/article/A-New-Obstacle-for-Students/148795/?cid=gs&utm_source=gs&utm_medium=en

2013 AECT Conference

Yeah, this post is MONTHS overdue. Welcome to academia. The two months it has taken me to write about the (not so) recent AECT convention is no reflection on how good it was. As always, this was my favorite professional event of the year.

The 2013 convention was held in Orange County, California. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, which was the best hotel experience I have ever had. Kudos to those folks. I arrived a day early so that I could recover from travel and jet lag before trying to learn anything. That turned out to be a smart move, because I ended up arriving much later than anticipated due to airplane repairs in Las Vegas. I highly recommend you do the same if you are ever traveling across multiple time zones. Registration was smooth, which considering how many people attend this convention is a miracle in itself.

Concurrent sessions began on Wednesday at 1pm. The first session I attended was Promoting Personalized Learning with Open Educational Resources by Yu-Ju Lin, followed by Chronotypes and Online Learning by Yi Luo. Are you a morning person or an evening person? Do you know how this affects your participation in online learning? Yi Luo does!

What do instructional designers do and why do they do it? That was the subject of An Investigation of Instructional Designer's Decision Making in Higher Education by Bruce Sowers. This was followed by Toward an Instructional Design Theory of Accessibility by Lloyd Rieber and Michele Estes who spoke about social, physical, intellectual, and motivational accessibility.

My last concurrent sessions of the day included how to overcome transactional distance by E-Ling Hsiao and Effective Asynchronous Course Design for Virtual Schools by Michael Barbour. Both of these addressed asynchronous online education, which covers a large portion of this educational market.

The first general session of the convention was in a TED Talks format called AECTX. It included talks by Ali Carr-Chellman, Thomas C. Reeves, and David Wiley. I love this format, and these speakers were amazing. This was followed by the Welcome Reception. The Graduate Student Association and the Design and Development Division went out on the town afterwards, but I was already exhausted. So, I crashed before the big day - Halloween at AECT.

The day started early with a great discussion with Katherine Ley and Ruth Gannon Cook on online interactions and social presence. This discussion ended up bringing to my attention a great tool (Zoom) that I am still using in my work today. Talk about transfer of learning! This was followed by another general session honoring David H. Jonassen, a leader in the field who died shortly after the last convention. Thanks to the Technology Help Center, I had everything I needed for my presentation on ACUI's The Exchange, their innovative digital library. After my presentation, I had the pleasure of hearing from E-Ling Hsiao again on the topic of using wikis for personal knowledge management.

Lunchtime provided opportunities for networking, which is one of the best parts of conferences and conventions. It's an opportunity to connect with colleagues I rarely see and to pick the brains of those more knowledgeable than I.

Do you ever go to a presentation and think, "Wow. There goes my dissertation idea." Well, that's what I thought when I attended Modeling Third Place as an Environment to Foster Sense of Community in Online Instruction by Ibrahim Ahmed Gashim, Tahani Aldosemani, and Craig Shepherd. They did a great job with their presentation! Afterwards, Robert Kennedy and Glenda Gunter shared insights from Interactive India. These were followed by posters and roundtables. I love that the posters and roundtables had their own slot instead of having to compete with the concurrent sessions. I also like that the concurrent sessions on Thursday were broken up by breaks of other types of events in between. Way to go convention planning team! During round-table sessions, I took the opportunity to talk to Verily Tan who is doing some great work in the area of informal learning.

The last concurrent sessions of the day focused on cultural diversity, including Engagement that Recognizes Cultural Diversity with Annette Backs and Ana Donaldson. Donaldson followed this up with Phases of Engagement with an Emphasis on Cultural Diversity. The Fun Run and the 3MT Competition were next, but I was utterly exhausted and needed a nap so I could be fresh for the Halloween Dance later that night.

Despite the late night, I managed to make it to the Breakfast with Champions at 7am for some more networking. This was followed by a general session with Howard Rheingold on How & Why to Become Net Smart. I honestly can't remember anything else from Friday morning until the Distance Learning Division luncheon and meeting. As a Crystal Award Co-coordinator, I was particularly excited to see the winners of the award be recognized. More posters and roundtables followed where I had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Elizabeth Boling about studio classes.

The afternoon concurrent sessions were near and dear to my heart, as I was a research subject for one of them. Nilufer Korkmaz and Marisa Exeter presented on Advising in an Online Instructional Technology EdD Program, and Thomas Royce Wilson presented on The Role of Empathy in Transformational Online Education. After concurrent sessions the AECT Membership Meeting was held, followed by the University Reception.

Saturday was the last day of the convention, but it was also one of the best for learning. The first two presentations were on peer interaction and feedback in online environments. Then, I attended a workshop with Tom Conway on Using Universal Design for Accessible Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE) Instruction. If you ever get the chance to attend a workshop or presentation with Tom Conway, do it. This workshop was wonderful, even in the last session of the last day of a whirlwind convention.

That afternoon, I treated myself to a trip to Disneyland to enjoy the surreal combination of Halloween and Christmas decorations they had going on. Seriously, the Winnie the Pooh ride was my favorite. I'm apparently still four years old at heart.

Next year's AECT Convention is in Jacksonville, Florida, November 4-8. The Call for Proposals is open right now if you want to take advantage of it.

What Should You Do With Your Life?

This week's topic is Careers and Professional Development. To explore this topic, we take a look at two articles. In Butler and Waldroop's (1999) article, employee retention takes a front seat. They claim that employers do not understand the concept of work satisfaction. Employers seem to think if someone is a successful employee, he or she is a happy employee. However, research shows that happy employees are those whose work aligns with their interests. Aligning word with those interests is called job sculpting, and employers would be smart to take it into consideration. The authors blame hiring practices and development practices as reasons why the system is currently broken. Hiring practices are based on abilities, not interests. The problem with professional development is that HR people are not your boss. If you want to truly develop as a professional, you and your boss need to collaborate on that. Another interesting aspect of this article was the discussion of the top eight life interests for people suited to business careers. These are application of technology, quantitative analysis, theory development and conceptual thinking, creative production, counseling and mentoring, managing people and relationships, enterprise control, and influence through language and ideas.

Paradise (2009) looks at the 2009 ASTD State of the industry report. The good news is that those of us in areas of study that align with workforce development and performance improvement are in a field that remains steady. At least in 2009 organizations were not cutting professional development budgets. That said, the employee to training staff ratio is quite high. So, while there is plenty of work to be done, organizations do not appear to be hiring more of us to do it. Outsourcing went down a little bit, which would suggest organizations are hiring their own development teams, rather than hiring outside companies.

While the job market in professional development tends to be seasonal, I've noticed a lot of jobs in that area over the last couple of years. My job board notices are constantly flashing with new entries for instructional designers, trainers, and workforce development coordinators. Perhaps, as more of us are hired into this field, we can design professional development programs that take into consideration people's interests and helps to bridge the gap between employee and supervisor for better collaboration.

References

Butler, T., & Waldroop, J. (1999). Job sculpting: The art of retaining your best people. Harvard Business Review, 77(5), 144-152.

Paradise, A. (2009, November). The 2009 ASTD state of the industry report. T+D, 44-49.

Every Field has It's Issues

It appears a big issue in Human Performance Technology is research, or lack thereof. James Klein (2002) takes us through three years' worth of articles in Performance Improvement Quarterly to determine how many involved empirical research and what that research had to say. Apparently, about 36% of the articles were empirical research. This is quite high, on one hand, since the article also refers to a similar review of four publications that only turned up 7%. Yet, it is quite low, on the other hand, considering the importance of research in the field. Most of the research involved surveys and case studies. Direct observation was not common. The topics of these research articles tended more toward practices of professionals and training strategies rather than on whether or not different methods are actually working. Klein identifies the many gaps in HPT research that many consider vital to address.

Pershing, Lee, and Cheng (2008) gather the opinions of fifteen experts in the field regarding dominant methods, influential fields of study, and research and development within the field. Popular models included the ISPI model and models by Rummler, Gilbert, Mager-Pipe, and Tosti. The experts did not push for new models, but did call for better evaluation methods. Most appeared to be neutral with regard to interventions, not seeing them as the major focus of HPT. The top three most influential disciplines were "systems theory, information technology, and cognitive science" (Pershing, Lee, and Cheng, 2008). Although many other disciplines were also influential to some degree. There were mixed reviews of the current research in the field. Some even thought research was not needed. It's clear that most have an opinion about research. The problem is that many of those opinions conflict with one another.

This trend toward lack of research in HPT keeps coming up in my classes this semester. It has come up repeatedly in my course on needs analysis. Most of our readings are quite old, simply because there is so little research on the topic, especially with regard to which methods are most effective. In IT Foundations, it is coming up again. While instructional technology and HPT are both applied fields, instructional technology tends to be more academic, whereas HPT is more organizational. Organizations simply do not have the time, nor take the time, for research. Academia tends to focus on itself, leaving very few folks actually studying organization interventions and methods. The real question is what needs to change in order to support and encourage more research in this area? My suspicion is that it would require a paradigm shift on the part of modern business practices, as well as more incentives for academics to do field research in organizations. I welcome your thoughts.

References

 

Klein, J. D. (2002). Empirical research on performance improvement. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 15(1), 99-110.

Pershing, J. A., Lee, J. & Cheng, J. (2008). Current status, future trends, and issues in human performance technology, part 2: models, influential disciplines, and research and development. Performance Improvement, 47 (2), 7-15.

A Matter of Ethics

This week we are looking at performance standards and ethics within instructional technology and human performance technology. Honestly, this subject deserves an entire course just by itself. It's a matter of great importance within any professional association. I am a member of AECT, and there is a section in every Tech Trends issue devoted to ethics. A section of the website is devoted to the ethical principles agreed upon by the membership. This is true of other associations, as well.

One of those issues of Tech Trends was assigned reading on this subject. This particular article provides a provocative scenario. A student appeals to her professor regarding another student who was looking at pornography during class. The principle covered addressed the responsible use of media as being a commitment to society. While the article provided no closure to the fictional scenario, it offered possible explanations and solutions that could have been used to correct the problem before it became a problem. Like many ethical principles, this one contains a lot of grey area. I can think of all kinds of reasons naked people might pop up on someone's computer screen. I remember doing research on vermicomposting (composting with worms) and finding all the wrong websites for the topic. Indiana University has the famed Kinsey Institute. Insert a minor in sex education, and it would be perfectly reasonable for a student to be utilizing pornography for valid educational use. I've worked in community health for many years. My branch of health studies originated in Europe, and I can tell you that most of my textbooks feature a lot of naked people. Even if the student had been viewing those sites unjustifiably, the article points out that there is a big continuum between freedom of speech and expression and unlawful acts.

Banaji, Bazerman, and Chugh (2003) take a look at ethical management and the fact that we view our own ethics above where they actually are. This brings up a question. If we do not know we are being unethical, how can we correct it? The first issue covered in this article is that of implicit bias, when we have biases we are not even aware of. I don't have to take the Implicit Association Test to know I have implicit bias. Leaving home and going away to college taught me that I soaked up a lot of bias along the way, despite years of rebelling against the prejudices around me. The next issue covered is in-group favoritism. Apparently, nepotism is alive and well in our culture. The problem is that our groups tend to be made up of people like us. Another problem is that people tend to think too highly of themselves. While confidence is identified as virtue in today's world, this article explains how this dilemma can lead to diminished group performance. Conflict of interest is another problem. I just started working for a research project of the Center for Research on Learning and Technology. Part of the new hire process is taking compliance training. Identifying conflicts of interest and recognizing which ones need to be disclosed is an important part of that training. The training program is quick to point out that we all have biases, whether or not we know it, that contribute to conflicts of interest. This is a good reason why data collection and analysis should always be triangulated. So, back to the question of how to correct unintentional questionable ethics. This article suggests collecting data, shaping your environment, and broadening your decision-making. That sounds much easier said than done.

Finally, Guerra (2006) takes an extended look at ethics with regard to HPT.  I found the comparison between the definitions of ethics, morals, values, and business ethics in this chapter interesting. The author explains that the chapter deals with normative ethics. This branch of ethics looks at acceptable behaviors. The consequentialist theory bases the morality of an action on its consequences. My undergraduate degree is in religious studies, and in that field this approach was identified as a developmentally childlike approach to morality. Some people never grow out of this stage. This author encourages reflection on where on the continuum of ethical egoism, utilitarianism, and ethical altruism one's organization stands when making ethical decisions. The next step up to consequence-based ethics is conforming to the rules. This is called intentionality in this chapter. Then, what follows is virtue ethics, which is based in developing good moral character. The author next addresses the question of whether or not ethics are relative or absolute, without actually answering the question. Let's face it. These questions have been debated for millennia, chances are good we are not coming up with the answers anytime soon. According to the four-stage process for making ethical decisions, one must recognize there is a moral question in order to make an ethical decision. This reminds me of the saying, "Hindsight is 20/20." It's much easier to recognize a morally questionable situation after the fact. The good news from all of this is that professional codes of ethics actually do make a difference. Therefore, AECT, ISPI, and all the other professional organizations that put so much effort in them are not wasting their time.  I could fill another blog post with the discussion and suggestions this author provides regarding ethical values in both instructional design and human performance. So, I'll just say that there are guidelines out there, and they are gaining more and more attention.

Guerra (2006) paints the picture of organizations that are growing in their focus on ethical standards, and I hope that is true. The chapter was written eight years ago, and I must say that one of my explicit biases is that ethics seems to have no place in modern business practices. I really hope that is an unfounded bias, and corporate America is far more ethically sound than I imagine it. I'm glad ethics is being covered in my foundations course. As I said before, I would love to see it offered as a required course so that we could explore some of the professional codes more thoroughly.

References

Banaji, M. R., Bazerman, M. H., & Chugh, D. (2003). How (Un) ethical are you? Harvard Business Review, 81(12), 56-64.

Guerra, J. A. (2006). Standards and ethics in human performance technology. In J. A. Pershing (Ed.) (2006), Handbook of human performance technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 1024-1046). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Napper, V., Hadley, K., & Yeaman, A. R. J. (2010). Is Janet viewing porn in class!?!! TechTrends, 54(2), 22-23.